CatBus

Warbler said:

CatBus said:

Warbler said:

CatBus said:

Warbler said:

Warbler said:

You can argue that the Civil War statues shouldn’t be removed, but the statue honoring a white supremacist uprising definitely had to go.

Civil War, white supremacist uprising. You say tomato…

huh?

You say tomato, I say tomahto–it’s an old song. It means that there is no significant difference between those words.

I’m not so sure you can say there is no significant difference between a white supremacist uprising and the Civil War. I think the Civil War was bit more complicated than that.

It took a lot longer to put down than most other white supremacist uprisings, certainly. Other than that, I’m not really seeing it. Certainly if those cop killers honored by the statue in question had the military capacity of the Confederacy, I’m sure they’d have had delusions of statehood as well.

I’d try to argue this with you, but I don’t think you are going to listen.

Have it your way.

http://www.livescience.com/13673-civil-war-anniversary-myths.html

Warbler said:

CatBus said:

Warbler said:

Warbler said:

You can argue that the Civil War statues shouldn’t be removed, but the statue honoring a white supremacist uprising definitely had to go.

Civil War, white supremacist uprising. You say tomato…

huh?

You say tomato, I say tomahto–it’s an old song. It means that there is no significant difference between those words.

I’m not so sure you can say there is no significant difference between a white supremacist uprising and the Civil War. I think the Civil War was bit more complicated than that.

It took a lot longer to put down than most other white supremacist uprisings, certainly. Other than that, I’m not really seeing it. Certainly if those cop killers honored by the statue in question had the military capacity of the Confederacy, I’m sure they’d have had delusions of statehood as well.

Warbler said:

Warbler said:

You can argue that the Civil War statues shouldn’t be removed, but the statue honoring a white supremacist uprising definitely had to go.

Civil War, white supremacist uprising. You say tomato…

huh?

You say tomato, I say tomahto–it’s an old song. It means that there is no significant difference between those words.

Handman said:

In the coming days, the city will also remove three statues of Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard and Confederate President Jefferson Davis, now that legal challenges have been overcome.

Are we trying to pretend the Civil War never happened? Robert E. Lee is probably the least offensive prominent Confederate figure. He’s nowhere near as bad as George Wallace, who actually ran for President on a white supremacy platform… in 1968. I don’t feel like these removals are really thought through.

Kids manage to learn all about the Revolutionary War without having statues of or military bases named after Benedict Arnold. I’m sure nobody will forget about the Civil War without statues to this particular batch of traitors.

Warbler said:

You can argue that the Civil War statues shouldn’t be removed, but the statue honoring a white supremacist uprising definitely had to go.

Civil War, white supremacist uprising. You say tomato…

Odd that a statue honoring terrorists should have to be taken down under cover of night by workers wearing bulletproof vests, but I guess that’s post-racial America for you.

https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/04/24/us/ap-us-confederate-statues-new-orleans.html

PTOTST in that order said:

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

CatBus said:

There likely will not be an official release of the Star Wars trilogy on home video until the copyrights expire and we get a good public domain release.

But who here has time to wait for the end of western civilization?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_film :

Due to the U.S. Copyright Term Extension Act, no more films will automatically enter public domain in the United States until January 1, 2019, when the copyright will expire on films released in 1923 (and in 2020 films from 1924, and so on).

Isn’t Disney the king of keeping IP’s private though? Mickey Mouse…

I wasn’t disputing at all that this would happen fairly close to when the sun explodes, just that this is how long we’ll have to wait, regardless of how long the wait is.

SilverWook said:

CatBus said:

Possessed said:

I doubt any such thing was signed anyway

Hard to say, but regardless of that, I think the studios in general give quite a lot of deference to a film’s director (on the issue of home video releases, that is). Star Wars is hardly the only film where some shitty director’s cut is given priority over the theatrical cut. And while Lucas only directed one of the films, I think Disney will still defer to him on the whole trilogy out of some sort of misguided sense of professional respect, even if they’re not legally obligated to. I expect that will continue even after death (see the Narnia reordering fiasco, where publishers interpreted a letter where CS Lewis humors an enthusiastic fan as justification for still effing up the whole series 50 years after the man is no longer capable of being offended by their publishing choices).

There likely will not be an official release of the Star Wars trilogy on home video until the copyrights expire and we get a good public domain release.

And this is why we have fan preservations.

Possessed said:

I doubt any such thing was signed anyway

Hard to say, but regardless of that, I think the studios in general give quite a lot of deference to a film’s director (on the issue of home video releases, that is). Star Wars is hardly the only film where some shitty director’s cut is given priority over the theatrical cut. And while Lucas only directed one of the films, I think Disney will still defer to him on the whole trilogy out of some sort of misguided sense of professional respect, even if they’re not legally obligated to. I expect that will continue even after death (see the Narnia reordering fiasco, where publishers interpreted a letter where CS Lewis humors an enthusiastic fan as justification for still effing up the whole series 50 years after the man is no longer capable of being offended by their publishing choices).

There likely will not be an official release of the Star Wars trilogy on home video until the copyrights expire and we get a good public domain release.

DominicCobb said:

CatBus said:

TV’s Frink said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/04/21/trump-just-admitted-his-presidency-isnt-going-well-tacitly/?utm_term=.896255e23281

The 100 day standard isn’t very fair. Ambitious goals require time. For example, at the current rate, it doesn’t seem very likely that Trump will play more golf that Obama did in his entire 8-year term for another few months.

Gotta admire the effort though.

It is super-mighty. Er, I mean yuuge. Sorry, I get those two mixed up sometimes.

TV’s Frink said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/04/21/trump-just-admitted-his-presidency-isnt-going-well-tacitly/?utm_term=.896255e23281

The 100 day standard isn’t very fair. Ambitious goals require time. For example, at the current rate, it doesn’t seem very likely that Trump will play more golf that Obama did in his entire 8-year term for another few months.

Jetrell Fo said:

chyron8472 said:

Jetrell Fo said:

CatBus said:

Similarly there was a common refrain that Obama created ISIS, which was equally impossible given that it happened before Obama. Does that absolve him of any blame for ISIS-related failures? Not at all, just the creation of it.

If I’m not mistaken, this reference was about the ISIL state created inside Syria. Obama waited til Damascus was obliterated before doing anything. American tax payers forked out billions of dollars to weaponize resistance fighters, those resistance fighters turned against us and took all those toys with them to Syria. That is why the claim that Obama created ISIS was used by Trump.

No. The reason why Trump claimed that Obama created ISIS is because Trump just makes up lots of random accusations, be they valid or not. You are retconning Trump’s intent by assigning reasoning that Trump was likely never even aware of at the time he said it.

Okay, I’ll back up my point if you can back up yours? Naw, I’m not like that, here is something to read. I don’t know what Trump knows or doesn’t know and when he knows it or doesn’t but if you do, good on you.

http://investmentwatchblog.com/why-is-obama-helping-isis/

Just for kicks, I followed the link. Holy cow. I didn’t know there were sites still linking to InfoWars as a “more information” source for their articles, since Alex Jones came out and said “Oh, it’s all just made up conspiracy theories for the gullible–I’m just a performance artist.” That statement, being something that actually happened, must be slow-traveling news in some circles. Apparently InfoWars is still not a red flag for whacked out unsubstantiated BS for the entire world quite yet.

Alderaan said:

This is venturing a little off topic from refugees to illegal immigration now, but certainly the lax immigration stance of the U.S. government in the last generation or so has been one of the big factors in driving down U.S. wages and decreasing the average standard of living.

You realize that the net undocumented movement into and out of the US has been effectively zero (technically, a slight net loss) for about the past decade, right? It’s basically like the entire Obama administration was an experiment in what happens when there’s zero new illegal immigration. It’s very much like a big wall was constructed, except much cheaper and actually effective. Zero can be a big factor, though, for extremely small values of big.

The big increase in illegal immigration that was triggered a few decades back (the tail end of which lasted into this century–so your “last generation” comment could be referring to part of this) was because the Reagan administration severely tightened controls. What used to be relatively lax movement of seasonal workers back and forth got dramatically restricted, and those seasonal workers eventually had to choose which side they’d rather be stuck on–and they chose the US side. So tightening immigration policies is actually what led to the last real boom in illegal immigration in the US. Not that we don’t have people hard at work fabricating a more recent imaginary boom in illegal immigration due to an imaginary lax immigration stance.

Economists generally agree that the effects of immigration on the U.S. economy are broadly positive. This includes refugees, so perhaps the household metaphor is too simplistic.

@Frink:

Also:

Two forks feel tingly flipping meat.
Twin foxes fart twice for months.
Thanks for fixing that for me.

@Alderaan:

Nevermind, I failed to find common ground. The idea that IS sprang forth from a quarter-assed arms campaign and not from the long-term blistering resentment of Arab populations to their own foreign-backed oppressive regimes is just something that’s too far out there for me, as is the idea that we should think twice about accepting refugees simply because 15% or so of our population is comprised of congenital bigots who might behave badly (and still not as badly as the people the refugees are fleeing, nor much more badly than the bigots were behaving before the refugees arrived).

TV’s Frink said:

CatBus said:

Obama “cool” wasn’t all about sunglasses, or keeping an even tone of voice. It was also cool as in Instagramming pictures of his wife on a yacht.

TFFTFM.

Alderaan said:

The fact is that the Obama administration was right to end the Iraq War, and wrong to essentially bring 6 years of civil war to Syria.

I think it’s pretty clear we see things differently on a lot of matters, but there’s something salient here I think we can maybe agree on. I think a lot of people who supported Obama saw his anti-Iraq War stance and then were surprised by his later positions in various conflicts. The thing is, Obama is no pacifist, and never was. Nor is he a saber-rattling human-rights-defending pro-democracy militant. His opposition to Iraq was practical, not ideological: it simply didn’t make any g****mn sense to support a war that pretty much exclusively benefitted Iran and was also a terrible drag on the US. It was, in many ways, coldly calculating and utilitarian–what purpose did this war serve? If we don’t benefit, who does? If the accounts don’t add up–fuck it, he’s out.

This same cool, detached analysis led to, well, nothing much in Syria, as you said. Who would benefit from various degrees of intervention? It was hard for him to come up with a formulation where it benefitted the US. The most he could muster was attempting to order a cruise missile attack on Syrian military facilities, but because he sought permission from Congress, that also led to nothing. The only thing of consequence he really did was provide fairly meager support for refugees trying to escape that war, which only looks generous in contrast with today. But he did it only because there’s no real downside for the US to resettle Syrian refugees.

Obama “cool” wasn’t all about sunglasses, or keeping an even tone of voice. It was also cool as in calculating, both in good and bad ways.

TV’s Frink said:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/report-wh-directed-intel-agencies-to-find-cover-for-trumps-wiretap-claims

The executive branch ordering its intelligence services to find support for an outlandish and unsupported claim that everyone with any knowledge in the matter immediately knew was BS from the very beginning, but they just can’t let it go? It’s like I’ve heard that somewhere before.

Oddly, I’ve never heard an instance of one of these “investigations” starting in one administration and continuing on through a party transition. It’s like the intelligence agencies know the difference between a BS politically motivated investigation and one based on real evidence. They immediately drop the BS investigations like a hot potato, but keep soldiering on with the real ones.

Alderaan said:

So are you saying Obama didn’t campaign on ending the Iraq War?

Nope. Wonder where that came from.

And didn’t take credit for ending the Iraq War?

I don’t think he ever took credit for the agreement with the Iraqi government, but he did take credit for being one of the earliest voices of reason in the Senate, an opinion which eventually won over most Americans and led to Bush ending the Iraq War. That all seems fair to me.

But then a few years later when Islamic State is a big deal, and people are saying U.S. troops left too early, he didn’t try and make the case that the pullout was all on Bush anyway?

The pullout was all on the Bush administration (and the Iraqi government, who also demanded that timetable), and anyone who said so was simply being truthful. I’m not in any way denying that the truth can serve to advance certain political positions, and in his case it absolutely lined up to support Obama. Whether the withdrawal was really the direct cause of the success of ISIS in those years he never addressed AFAIK, focusing instead on the fact that the RW pundits were getting the facts wrong, which they were. In many ways, I feel that was always a red herring with other factors such as high oil prices and the increasingly sectarian division within Iraq being closer to the root causes. IMO, the US troops were just a lid on the Iraqi pressure cooker. The longer they stayed, the more pressure would be released when they left. And if they tried to stay forever, it would just explode.

Alderaan said:

Treaties are pieces of paper. They get ignored all the time.

Sure, they get ignored. And ignoring that particular piece of paper would have been an act of war (huge presence of foreign troops in a country against the expressed wishes of that government–pretty much dictionary definition of act of war). Yes, an option available to Obama. A shitty, irresponsible choice that would have needlessly endangered the lives of our soldiers and made conditions in Iraq even worse, but a choice he nevertheless had the option to make. Strangely enough, he didn’t seem to consider it.

Alderaan said:

I don’t think it’s accurate to say that because Bush had negotiated for an Iraq pullout in 2011, that Obama was bound by that. He could have done whatever he wanted, as he often did. So I think that’s kind of a dubious claim.

Yes, he could have kept our forces there against the will of the Iraqi government simply by re-invading, or knocking over that government and installing yet another government that agreed to our continued presence. That was definitely an option available to him.

The US is not magically released from agreements and treaties it makes with other governments simply because the presidency changes hands. Nobody would bother signing a treaty with us if that were the case.

Alderaan said:

CatBus said:

I think part of the issue is that Obama’s policies were often criticized not directly, but by using oddly specific made-up statistics. By arguing with those imaginary statistics (but not the implied policy criticism), it often ended up making that implied criticism point back to a point in time prior to the Obama administration, whether or not the implied criticism was ever valid in the first place.

I don’t think the veracity of the blame-assignment is relevant. Partisans are going to be partisan.

Well, sure. But part of the problem of Democrats spending more time arguing against made up conspiracy theories is that they spend less time arguing the merits of the policy. Which means the Dems (and the public) may assume their policies are good simply because the arguments being made against it have no merit. And that’s not necessarily true at all. I wish people had challenged Obama’s policies more on the merit of those policies–it may have actually shifted the political discussion and gotten something changed.

Alderaan said:

I just caught a moment of Harball and saw Chris Matthews criticizing Trump for taking a “blame everything on Obama” approach. Pretty sure he never criticized Obama for taking the “blame everything on Bush” approach for almost his entire presidency.

I think part of the issue is that Obama’s policies were often criticized not directly, but by using oddly specific made-up statistics. By arguing with those imaginary statistics (but not the implied policy criticism), it often ended up making that implied criticism point back to a point in time prior to the Obama administration, whether or not the implied criticism was ever valid in the first place.

For example, RW pundits often said Obama decided to pull out of Iraq too fast, and Obama correctly stated that the pullout timetable was negotiated and finalized by the Bush administration. Does that absolve him entirely of the conditions in Iraq post-pullout? Not at all. Does it mean that the conditions in Iraq were determined by the pullout timetable? It doesn’t really address that part of the question at all. But the pullout itself was absolutely, positively, not his call. By arguing with the made-up statistic, however, he avoided talking about the conditions in Iraq, and also didn’t have to address if the timetable was related to the conditions there. Intentional? Maybe. But I think it falls more on the side of “correcting the record” than “shifting the blame”, when you’re responding to something that’s factually inaccurate to begin with.

Similarly there was a common refrain that Obama created ISIS, which was equally impossible given that it happened before Obama. Does that absolve him of any blame for ISIS-related failures? Not at all, just the creation of it.

Similarly, RW pundits often said that 75 straight months of job growth was impossible, that the feds were fudging the statistics, and the economy was weak. Obama correctly pointed out that the numbers were calculated the same way they always were, and that you can have 75 straight months of job growth and still have a weak economy if you’re starting out from a position of extraordinary weakness 75 months ago, which did in fact exist.

I think the difference here is that, if a criticism is missing the made-up statistics, you can’t dodge or deflect the issue by arguing with the made-up statistics (well, I suppose you could try to argue with reality, but that tends to be obvious). I’m sure there was some blame-shifting under Obama, but at least as far as I can remember, it was much more canny and could certainly be interpreted, much of the time, as simply correcting the record.

TV’s Frink said:

The key part is that last paragraph. It means at least some of the dossier was independently corroborated.

Actually I believe several things about the dossier have been independently corroborated, but many of those things were not really related to any of the juicier headline-grabbing details. Just technical stuff, so-and-so Russian person was a agent for such-and-such Russian intelligence service, etc. Nevertheless, so far, the dossier has proven right whenever enough evidence was available to prove or disprove it… which still hasn’t been a lot, yet.

Ah, the fact that you were singling out Democrats made me think it was a strawman argument countering Republican interference, rather than a strawman argument countering Russian interference.

Jetrell Fo said:

Like the Democrats have never meddled in the elections of other countries.

Are you arguing with anyone here? Just wondering who’s making the claims on the other side.

oojason said:

Theresa May, the current British Prime Minister, has called a General Election to be held on Thursday 8th June…

(which is a bit of a U-turn - even for her)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39629603

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/18/theresa-may-uk-general-election-8-june

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-calls-election-times-she-said-there-would-be-no-snap-election-a7688471.html

 

How do you call an early election? - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39630209

Is my understanding correct that this isn’t really expected to change anything substantive? i.e. the people, parliamentary percentages, policies, etc, aren’t really expected to change much at all, but this is really more about getting May out from under that “temporary caretaker government” shadow after Cameron left?